


What Goes Around, Comes Around

by nerdyydragon



Series: Kingsman Tumblr Ficlets [61]
Category: Doctor Who (2005), Kingsman (2014), Kingsman (2015), Kingsman (Movies)
Genre: Eventual Harry Hart | Galahad/Gary "Eggsy" Unwin, Gen, M/M, This got so out of control, Time Shenanigans, Time Travel Fix-It
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-03
Updated: 2016-12-04
Packaged: 2018-09-06 06:23:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,656
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8738215
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nerdyydragon/pseuds/nerdyydragon
Summary: Eggsy meets a man with a strange ship who promises to show him the stars, but he doesn't quite get what he bargained for.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer*  
> Also, I 100% lost control of this and you can tell where things get wibbly-wobbly, so there WILL be a second chapter (this one is actually getting a chapter and not a series) to explain what happens in the first go around because this hurts even my head to read, and I wrote this mess.

_ 3156 _

The third planet had only been able to sustain life for so long - there were simply too many people and not enough resources. So humanity had spread out across the galaxy and left their planet to itself, becoming a jungle and overrun with wildlife (or so they had assumed, no one had been back in over six centuries, and by then the earth had just begun to heal the damage that had been done to it).

Eggsy had never seen the planet, for all that it was spoken about in ancient history. His home was a small planetary set at the end of a solar system, and he had never seen a different pattern of stars than the ones he looked to every evening out of the skylight in his bedroom, while he wondered what it would be like to leave, to travel, to see the universe.

He didn’t really begin to get reckless until his twentieth birthday, but then he could feel it - the itch in the soles of his shoes to get out, get away, to run and never stop. He tried to temper it by taking up some old Earth practice called parkour, but it hadn’t helped much. So Eggsy hung around docking stations, trying to figure out the best way to secure passage off of the planet and out into the stars.

“This isn’t the way to do it, you know.” It had been over two months, and Eggsy was starting to get tetchy, trying to find a way out.

“Who are you, then?” Although he didn’t know everyone on his planet - it was large, after all - he knew that this man in his long coat and pinstripes and interesting looking shoes (as though Eggsy himself could say anything) and wild hair didn’t belong to this system.

“I’m just someone passing through, someone who can help you find what you’re looking for.”

“Yeah, that ain’t an answer.” The man sighed and he ran a hand down his face.

“Just - follow me, Eggsy. I’ve got an adventure for you. That is, if you aren’t too attached to your life here.” He wasn’t sure how the man knew his name or why, and it had been drilled into him when he was young not to follow strangers - but he was an adult now, and that meant he could take care of himself. So he followed the strange man around the corner of a docking building to where a small ship was waiting, unlike any that he had ever seen.

“We gonna travel in this?” The ship itself seemed too small to hold more than one person, let alone two grown men. Until the door opened, and the man grinned widely as he waited for Eggsy’s reaction to the impossible expanse inside.

“Of course. Coming?” Eggsy only paused for a moment to run his hand down the fine wood grain on the door before stepping inside, the rubber of his trainers hitting metal grating as he looked around in awe. A man popped out from underneath the console - or at least, what Eggsy assumed to be the console - and wiped off his hands on a rag that had been sitting on a nearby padded bench.

“He given you his  _ ‘anywhere, anywhen’ _ speech yet?” The man gave him a once-over as he offered his hand to shake, which Eggsy took firmly.

“We’ve just passed  _ ‘bigger on the inside,’ _ so no, I haven’t.” The man paused and looked at the pair of them, glaring sternly at the man next to him. “No, Jack.”

“But Doctor -”

“ _ No _ .” They seemed to have some sort of nonverbal argument and the other man - Jack - sighed.

The three of them stepped up to the console, and Eggsy wondered how the three of them were going to fly something clearly meant for eight people.

“So where we going then?” Both men grinned at him.

“Wherever we’re needed.” He man Jack had referred to as Doctor patted the console affectionately. “Pull down that white lever on your right, and then press the red button for ten seconds.” Eggsy did, and the ship began to make groaning noises that worried him as the ship lurched sideways.

“Where’s that?” Jack looked at the Doctor and they grinned at each other before Jack busied himself with flying and the Doctor turned to him again.

“Let’s find out.”

The shuddering of the ship finally stopped and the wheezing ceased, leaving them in eery silence. The Doctor looked at the monitor, tilting his head and sighing. Jack came to stand next to him, staring blankly at the screen.

“Doc, this is a fixed point in time. Why here? Why this moment?” He said quietly. Eggsy understood that whatever was on that screen they weren’t allowed to change. The man called the Doctor looked between him and Jack, and then back at the screen, his face settling into stony determination.

“What happens next is fixed, yes. Valentine has to shoot him. But what happens after that? That we can change. We’ve already changed it.” The Doctor clutched at his head, grimacing. “I knew there was something important about you, Eggsy. I’m sorry for what you’ll have to do, but I think I’ve figured out why we picked you up to begin with.” Eggsy raised an eyebrow at him, and outside the doors of the ship a gunshot rang out. Jack clapped his hands together.

“Alright Eggsy, you and I are going to help this guy before he bleeds out.” Jack spun on his heel and headed for the door, Eggsy hesitating only a moment before following him out of the ship to collect the man now lying prone under the sun. With great difficulty, considering he was essentially dead weight, the two men carried him into the medical bay, where the Doctor began setting up odd-looking machines to get him stabilized and stop the blood flow.

“Harry Hart,” he tisked, as though he was a disapproving parent and not an alien who had never met the man before him. “What are we going to do with you?” Making sure Harry was stabilized, he turned to Eggsy. “Let’s get you into a suit.”

Eggsy followed him out of the med bay, not even bothering to question him. At this point, he was willing to just roll with whatever the Doctor threw at him. Slipping into a deep blue suit, similar to the one Harry had been wearing, he joined the time-traveller back at the console, where he began flicking switches.

“Are we leaving? Why am I wearing a suit? Doctor, what’s going on?”

“So many questions. You’re going to save the world, is what you’re going to do. Valentine, the man who shot Harry, is planning on a genocide that will wipe out four fifths of the human race, and you have to stop him. You’ve already stopped him, that’s why we’re here to begin with. If you fail, you’ll cease to exist, along with everyone you’ve ever known.” The Doctor double checked his settings and then flicked the switch that would take them where they needed to go, without even so much as a warning for Eggsy to hold on. Eggsy shook his head, trying to understand.

“Let me get this straight. I have to kill what will probably be a whole bunch of people, in order to make sure literal billions of people don’t die?” The Doctor nodded. “That is messed up.”

“I know, and I’m sorry to put that on you. I also don’t have any weapons on board, which means you’ll have to find a way to get one yourself. If I give you one of Jack’s, you might rip a hole in the continuum. Good luck, even if I know you won’t need it.” With that, Eggsy was herded outside of the ship and into an empty stone hallway. The door closed behind him, and he was alone. Inside, the Doctor took a deep breath, and then rejoined Jack in the ship’s medical bay. “How’s Harry doing?” Jack looked up at him.

“He’s already asking about Eggsy, even in his sleep. How? He doesn’t even know Eggsy yet.” Checking the man’s vitals, the Doctor collapsed into a chair.

“He will; just being on the ship is altering his timeline. In the timeline he had been living, Harry dies, as it was only his getting shot that was fixed but we weren’t there to save him. The world ends, for all intents, and Eggsy never exists.”

“Except Eggsy is very, very real. What happened?” Jack glared at the Doctor even as the other man grinned so widely his face might crack. “Doc, what did you do?”

“We’ve saved Harry, and Eggsy is now setting about saving the world, just as he’s  _ already done _ . In the timeline we’ve jumped into, we save Harry but have already introduced him to Eggsy; originally we landed earlier in the stream and Eggsy gets recruited into the same line of work Harry is currently employed in. He saved the world, but then he disappeared when we left to visit another planet. They’ve already met, and clearly Harry here has something he’d like to say to our young companion.”

“Except we didn’t land earlier in the stream this time, since we dropped him off and appeared at a different period in his life. Probably after you regenerated, right? Does Eggsy know this?”

“He will, eventually. By the time he gets back on the ship he should be just enough in the headspace to remember things that have happened and haven’t at the same time.” Jack shook his head.

“Doc, I worked for the time agency for years. I can’t die, and I’ve seen my share of weird things. But even  _ I  _ can’t wrap my head around all that.” He paused. “Is this why you didn’t want me to talk to him when he first boarded?” The Doctor nodded. Outside the room, they heard the doors close loudly and in a minute or so of silence the door to the med bay slid open. Eggsy looked a mess, with his hair in disarray and his suit cut to pieces.

“She had swords! For Legs! Swords!” He panted, staring wildly at the Doctor before taking a breath and sitting down heavily on the floor next to Harry’s bed. “By far the weirdest day I’ve ever had. Wake me up in a bit, yeah?” With that, the adrenaline wore off and the young man passed out, his head resting on the mattress next to Harry’s hand. Going off of a look, the other two men left the room in silence.

“Are the two of them going to be alright?” They reached the console, and began setting the coordinates for their next adventure, even if they couldn’t leave while Harry was in his current state.

“They’re going to be just fine, Jack.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As promised: the clarification of the wibbly wobbly timey wimey mess the Doctor starts in on near the end of the last chapter.

It was hard, Eggsy decided, trying to fake indifference for a man who seemed so hell-bent on inciting exactly the opposite. Humans from the past - the very distant past - were clearly much odder than anyone he was used to, and he knew people who had moved from all over the stars. When the Doctor had picked him up at the docks and asked him if he had wanted to see Earth, this wasn’t what Eggsy had had in mind when he agreed. Muttering something about timelines and holes in the fabric of the universe, they had gone on a quick tour of different points in the planet’s history, and then he had, much to his anger, been dumped in a year called two-thousand and fifteen, with a promise of “I’ll be back soon, don’t worry,” before the small interdimensional timeship had dematerialised in front of him.

That had been four months ago.

The man who had been sent on short notice from the Doctor to spring him from the Earth jail (after much string pulling to get everything to run smoothly), Harry Hart, was a fine bloke for his age, for any age, really, and he had taken quite a liking to Eggsy. Had told him he felt there was something different about him. If it wouldn’t cause a shift in time, Eggsy had half a mind to tell him that he was from the future. Despite all odds the two men had formed some strange type of bond, Eggsy helping around the Kingsman medical facility while Harry was recovering from a coma, using his status as Harry’s candidate to stick close to him. Technically he wasn’t supposed to be fraternizing, especially not with someone who held more than his fair share of sway in Kingsman, but one little instance of cheating which involved setting Merlin on the right track to contact lenses that functioned the same way the Kingsman glasses did and watches that gave you real-time feeds of every single system in your body (both technology they had in his time, so he wasn’t making  _ that  _ big of a difference by kickstarting it a little bit early) was more than enough to grant him a free pass by his mentor’s side.

Harry, it seemed, was far more influenced by his presence than he was by the older man’s, which on it’s own was rather considerable and spoke volumes about Harry’s capacity to feel for others despite his vehement protest. More than once Eggsy had caught him staring, gaze lingering just longer than could be considered proper, and he caught himself often wondering, in the dark of the recruit bunker, what it would be like to kiss him. His training, and the time spent with Harry, occupied his mind, and Eggsy quite forgot all about the Doctor and how he was supposed to have come back. All in all, he settled into life on Earth rather nicely.

Weeks passed and the recruit pool narrowed down to three - Roxy, himself, and unfortunately a rather annoying man by the name of Charlie who continuously mispronounced his name - and then two, when they had been submerged in the ground before they could be run over by a train. The remaining two, just he and Roxy now, were sent out of the facility to spend a full day with their mentors, and Eggsy would be lying if he wasn’t curious to see what Harry had planned. They took the lift back to the store front of the shop just as silently as they had gone down what seemed so long ago, and then poured themselves into the back of a cab and headed through the thick London traffic to Harry’s flat. For his part, Eggsy nearly ignored Harry, feigning exhaustion but in reality trying to memorize the patterns of the city; he hadn’t spent much time in contemporary London before he had been whisked off to Kingsman, and he didn’t want to forget a moment of a place he would likely never see again. He wondered briefly if Harry would take him out on the town the next day before they had to return to headquarters.

Harry helped him out of the cab and lead him up the short walk to the door, Eggsy marvelling at how different the night sky here was from his home.

“The one thing I’ve always hated about living in the city is that you can never quite see the stars,” Harry mused, opening the door behind him but not entering, opting instead to stand at his shoulder on the front step. “That’s why I enjoy travelling so much; when I get the opportunity, I always try and figure out how the stars are different from home.” Eggsy barely caught himself from saying that the stars were  _ nothing like the ones he grew up with _ , but that might lead to some rather awkward questions considering Harry believed he grew up in Estate housing in London. The two men surveyed the polluted sky for a moment longer before heading inside, Harry going immediately to the kitchen and starting a stir fry before taking Eggsy to see his office.

“What’s with all these newspapers, Harry? It’s a bit weird.” The older man sat down in the office chair and chuckled.

“Momentos, from missions. Sometimes I need a reminder.” Eggsy looked at him quizzically. “You’ll soon find, my dear boy, that in a job like this eventually a reason to continue on is sorely needed. Especially when it would be so easy to not dodge a bullet.”

“But you save people, don’t you Harry? That’s the point of this whole business, to save people.” Eggsy turned away to look at another clipping, and missed the soft look Harry sent him before he got out of his chair to join him.

“Of course, but the life of a Kingsman is a thankless one. It’s good to have a reminder every now and then that even if people die, even if there are those we cannot save, no matter what happens the lives of countless continue to tick on towards eternity.” Eggsy chuckled.

“That’s humanity for you, isn’t it. Always reaching. Always looking for a way to get somewhere they don’t even know exists.” Harry looked down at him, searching Eggsy’s face and trying to make heads or tails of his statement.

“Sometimes, darling, you say the strangest things. You seem wise beyond your years.” Eggsy looked up at him and they were both quiet; if anyone were to see them in this moment they would see two people on the cusp of their first kiss. But it wasn’t meant to be. Caught up as they were going through the frames in Harry’s study, they had entirely forgotten about the dinner they had been making, and were startled out of their reverie by the smoke detector beeping in the kitchen.

“Damn.” They made their way down the stairs and Harry salvaged both the stove-top and pan, but its contents unfortunately were beyond help. “How does Chinese takeaway sound?” Eggsy shrugged and Harry picked up the phone to place his order, tilting his head in the direction of the living room. “I suppose, now that we have the time, I can teach you the second lesson of being a proper gentleman.” Harry looked at Eggsy disapprovingly as he sat down across the bar from him. “I would have started with the first, but that was asking me before taking a seat. The second is making a proper martini.”

They spent the next few hours - both before and after the arrival of dinner - perfecting Eggsy’s mixing skills. He had made far more complicated drinks than this one back home when he was employed briefly as a bartender, but this one was far more difficult simply because it was so simple. Finally managing to mix one capable of meeting Harry’s standards, they toasted Eggsy’s progress and to their hopes that he would pass the final test, even if Harry was bound to keep from him what it entailed. The alcohol, it seemed, had loosened their restraint considerably, because by the end of the night the two of them had passed out in Harry’s bed, though doing no more than sleeping had somehow managed to become hopelessly tangled.

Morning came and with it stuttered half-sentences, and accidental almost-kiss that never but was also impossible to ignore, and breakfast, not complete without another lesson on proper social conduction - this time the order in which one uses breakfast utensils - before doing some “exploring” of the city and how Harry saw it on their way back to the shop.

Eggsy, as he had expected of himself, being so attached to the pug he had chosen, failed the final test, and Harry went to Kentucky. Eggsy watched as he was put under the influence of Valentine’s machine, taking out an entire church full of people, and getting shot in the head at point blank range. He screamed and railed at the injustice, even though he had known going in that something was going to happen, that there was no way he could have a happy ending like this. With Harry. A familiar screeching filled the silence of what was now a dead man’s house, and anger replaced his distress. A man in a leather jacket leaned out of the blue box and waved him inside, ignoring his obvious turmoil.

“Don’t worry, boy, it will all work out in the end.” He said, not even bothering to ask for help as he threw his ship back into gear.

“I want to go home now, please.” The man at the control, the Doctor,  _ his  _ Doctor, looked at him curiously.

“But you just got here! Didn’t you say you wanted to see the universe?” Eggsy shook his head.

“Things have changed, and that was before you dropped me here for almost a full orbital cycle.” The Doctor looked down at his control panel and flipped a switch, smiling to himself.

“Fair, then. Back home for you it is. Pity though, I had so many things you would have liked to see.” The screeching began again and Eggsy was out of the jumpseat before it had even stopped. He was almost at the door when the Doctor spoke again. “Oh and Eggsy? You had to believe it, the first time around. That it had already worked.” Eggsy gave him one last look before shaking his head in confusion and pulling open the door, stepping without looking into what he knew would be a familiar landscape.

Except it wasn’t, not quite. The room he was standing in held all of the trademarks of what he would call home, but the rest of the scene was foreign. It reminded him distinctly of Harry’s flat in Stanhope Mews, where they had burnt dinner and made martinis and almost kissed but didn’t, and where they had argued and tossed awful names and then Harry had left the door wide open and neither had said goodbye, only  _ Stay here, I’ll sort this out when I get back _ . It wasn’t exactly the same; styled in what was the current common style of his time. Out the window he could see traffic whizzing by, and he knew that at least the Doctor had gotten the time right. Eggsy heard music playing softly from where he both knew and assumed the kitchen to be, and as he got closer he could smell what was cooking. A stirfry, just like the one  _ they _ had started to make so long in the past.

Eggsy didn’t even make it into the kitchen. His head was pounding so badly as it felt like he was being flooded with millions of what-ifs and could-haves and long-gones and never-weres, and all at the forefront was Harry smiling at him in the shop mirror the first day they met, when he had made a clever reference to that ancient Earth film and Harry had lit up like a collapsing star. It all seemed to come back to Harry, in the end. Eggsy sunk down the wall he had been leaning against for support, hand over his eyes, and let out a sob as the tears finally began to fall. He hoped that whoever was in the kitchen had the good sense to leave him alone, but luck was not, as it hadn’t been in the last twelve hours, on his side. He heard footsteps round the corner frantically before whoever was in the house with him crouched down on his level, knee hitting the floor gently as they ran a large, warm hand up his arm. A man then, not his mother. If he tried hard enough, Eggsy could imagine he was back on Earth, and that this was Harry, not a stranger.

“Oh, my dear boy, you went around again, didn’t you?” He was pulled into the stranger’s arms, and Eggsy offered no resistance simply based on the fact that he couldn’t breathe. There was no way Harry was here, it wasn’t possible. He had been dead for over a millennium. Eggsy took a deep breath in through his nose, basking in the familiar scent of sandalwood as his brain tried desperately to come back online.

“Harry? But, but how?” Eggsy’s voice was halting and quiet, hardly more than a whisper. Harry smiled and shook his head fondly before running a hand through his hair.

“A blue box and the strangest pair of travellers. It’s like I’ve had the most curious dream, only to wake up and find that I wasn’t dreaming at all.” Eggsy wrapped his arms tentatively around the other man, still unsure. “You were right, darling. I don’t think humanity will ever stop reaching.” Eggsy tightened his grip. In the kitchen, the smoke alarm began to beep.

\----

“You can’t stay here, Harry. Not in this timeline.” The strange man who had saved his life seated himself next to him on the ramp, feet hanging out of the open door as he looked at the same stars Harry was watching. “I’ve already messed around in your life far more than I should have.”

“What about Eggsy? What’s happened to him?” Though Harry didn’t take his eyes off the changing patterns of starlight, dancing across his vision in orbits and galaxies he had never seen and likely never would again, the young man was his only concern. He didn’t even care how he had survived, when by all rights a shot that close should have killed him. Harry rubbed the scar tissue absently as he waited for the Doctor to answer.

“You’ll see him again, don’t worry. The three of us aren’t quite done. I’ve met him before, that boy, further in his life than the man you spoke to briefly here. He won’t remember you yet, not until he crosses back over. Too many variables.” Harry took his eyes off of the drifting nebula to look at the other man. “When I was younger, and he was a bit older than you just saw now, I picked him up and brought him to Earth. You know each other for six months, and -”

“Then I die.”

“I was going to say ‘fall in love’ but I suppose being morbid works as well. At any rate, after I drop you off in the future, only a few minutes before he gets home from  _ that  _ trip, I go back a little and pick him up as you see him here.”

“It’s a time loop?’ The Doctor chuckled and looked at the two men standing at the console. In an effort to keep things easier to erase, outside of the one conversation he couldn’t stop he had all but forbidden the two men from interacting longer than they had to.

“A rather odd one, but yes. Eggsy - this Eggsy - goes back in time with me to stop Valentine, believing he’s already done it and saved the world, and thus ensured that humanity reaches the stars and he even exists at all. In reality, he’d never done it, and by doing it the first time he completed the justice he would have enacted when you died, had I not gone and taken him into the future, which had been changed by dropping you off so far out of time.” Harry shook his head, rubbing more pointedly at the scar on his temple. “Yeah, time tends to do that.”

“I’d be fine with going home now, if it’s all the same to you.”

“One trip to the future, with a side of happiness, coming right up.” Harry stood up carefully and walked back over to the console, but the Doctor lingered in the open doorway for a moment. Maybe he had been wrong, when he said that happy endings were only fiction, when he told Rose that it was rare when everyone lived. In over nine hundred years of time and space, he still didn’t grasp humanity’s optimism, their hope for a brighter future, no matter how distant it may be. He didn’t think he ever would.


End file.
